Lower Max TDP

[EpikFlyingBrick]

I have a dell inspiron N7010 and an inspiron N7110 with a bad motherboard.  That one has a pretty good i7, the other has an i3.  They are both the same socket so I attempted to switch them out but it doesn't seem to boot on the i7.  I believe it is an issue with the tdp being 35w on the i7 and 25w on the i3.  Is there a way I could lower it?  

[Codyman125]

I'd bet you anything that Dell locked down the bios, so it'd only work with the i3... try updating the bios

[EpikFlyingBrick]

3 minutes ago, DEcobra11 said:

Do the coolers look the same?

they're slightly different, the heatpipe on the i7 is just barely bigger, but that's all. Nothing that would affect it too much. 

[EpikFlyingBrick]

10 minutes ago, Codyman125 said:

I'd bet you anything that Dell locked down the bios, so it'd only work with the i3... try updating the bios

since they're such similar laptops, do you think it would be possible to put the bios for the 35w i7 one onto the 25w i3 one?

[EpikFlyingBrick]

13 minutes ago, DEcobra11 said:

I did a quick search... do they even use CPUs with the same architecture?

Cause there's a site suggesting me that the N7110 uses sandy bridge (2nd gen) while the N7010 uses... westmere (1st gen)

Might be possible actually.  I'm assuming that if they are, there would be no way to get them working? Regardless of the TDP?  

 

Here's the i3

http://ark.intel.com/products/49020/Intel-Core-i3-370M-Processor-3M-cache-2_40-GHz

 

Here's the i7

http://ark.intel.com/products/52219/Intel-Core-i7-2630QM-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-2_90-GHz

 

Kind of odd though, the intel website is saying the max tdp on the i3 is 35w but NZXT Cam is saying 25w.